The war on online advertising is intensifying, and the ads are losing

A new front in the war against online advertising has opened up with the official release of Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 9. The most contentious feature was the ability for the mobile version of Safari to allow extensions to block ads.

Not only was there ad blocking software ready for installation on the day of the launch, but one application, Peace, became the top downloaded paid app on the iTunes App Store. The developer, Marco Arment, justified the need for ad blocking because online ads were engaging in excessive tracking and taking up space, data allowance and generally making the mobile browser experience worse for everyone.

But then, barely a day later, Arment pulled the app from the App Store, declaring that he didn’t “feel right” profiting from blocking other peoples’ ability to make money from ads. On Twitter, Arment went from being “immensely proud” of his app hitting the number one spot on iTunes to announcing that he was pulling it from the store.

Although Arment hasn’t elaborated on the precise technical reasons for pulling the app, it seems that the people behind Ghostery, the ad blocking technology that underpinned the app, decided that his implementation was not how they imagined their software being used.

Ghostery advocated for users of ad blockers to be “empowered” to decide for themselves what ads and trackers to block rather than the preemptive blocking that had been implemented in the initial version of Peace.

The public makes its views crystal clear

Since Peace has capitulated, another ad blocker, Crystal has taken the vanguard as the most downloaded paid app on iTunes.

Setting aside the arguments for or against online advertising, one thing is absolutely clear: the public do not want advertising to be part of their web browsing experience. So it really doesn’t matter whether web sites see this as the only way that they can find to provide free content.

The argument that this is all about bad vs good ads is also clearly not an issue any more. Ad blockers could render all ads obsolete, regardless of their perceived quality. Nobody is going to spend any time worrying about whether they should unblock particular ads.

Ghostery may have had laudable ambitions for an honest dialogue about ad tracking and ad quality, but it isn’t a conversation that the general public is interested in having. They simply want a total victory over online advertising.